1

A Case For End System Multicast

Yang-hua Chu, Sanjay Rao and Hui Zhang

Carnegie Mellon University

2

Unicast Transmission

End Systems

Routers

Gatech

CMU

Stanford

Berkeley

3

IP Multicast

•No duplicate packets

•Highly efficient bandwidth usage

Key Architectural Decision: Add support for multicast in IP layer

Berkeley

Gatech Stanford

CMU

Routers with multicast support

4

Key Concerns with IP Multicast• Scalability with number of groups

– Routers maintain per-group state

– Analogous to per-flow state for QoS guarantees

– Aggregation of multicast addresses is complicated

• Supporting higher level functionality is difficult– IP Multicast: best-effort multi-point delivery service

– End systems responsible for handling higher level functionality

– Reliability and congestion control for IP Multicast complicated

• Deployment is difficult and slow– ISP’s reluctant to turn on IP Multicast

5

The billion dollar question...• Can we achieve

efficient multi-point delivery,

without support from the IP layer?

6

End System MulticastStanford

CMU

Stan1

Stan2

Berk2

Overlay TreeGatech

Berk1

Berkeley

Gatech Stan1

Stan2

Berk1

Berk2

CMU

7

• Scalability– Routers do not maintain per-group state

– End systems do, but they participate in very few groups

• Easier to deploy

• Potentially simplifies support for higher level functionality– Leverage computation and storage of end systems

– For example, for buffering packets, transcoding, ACK aggregation

– Leverage solutions for unicast congestion control and reliability

Potential Benefits

8

What I hope to convince you of ...

• End System Multicast is a promising alternative approach for multi-point delivery– Narada: A distributed protocol for constructing efficient overlay

trees among end systems

– Simulation and Internet evaluation results to demonstrate that Narada can achieve good performance

• Consider applications with small and sparse groups – Around tens to hundreds of members

9

Performance Concerns

CMU

Gatech Stan1

Stan2

Berk1

Berk2

Duplicate Packets:

Bandwidth Wastage

CMU

Stan1

Stan2

Berk2

Gatech

Berk1

Delay from CMU to

Berk1 increases

10

What is an efficient overlay tree?• The delay between the source and receivers is small

• Ideally,

– The number of redundant packets on any physical link is low

Heuristic we use:

– Every member in the tree has a small degree

– Degree chosen to reflect bandwidth of connection to Internet

Gatech

“Efficient” overlay

CMU

Berk2

Stan1

Stan2

Berk1Berk1

High degree (unicast)

Berk2

Gatech

Stan2CMU

Stan1

Stan2

High latency

CMU

Berk2

Gatech

Stan1

Berk1

11

Why is self-organization hard?

• Dynamic changes in group membership – Members may join and leave dynamically

– Members may die

• Limited knowledge of network conditions– Members do not know delay to each other when they join

– Members probe each other to learn network related information

– Overlay must self-improve as more information available

• Dynamic changes in network conditions – Delay between members may vary over time due to congestion

12

Berk2 Berk1

CMU

Gatech

Stan1Stan2

Narada Design

CMU

Berk2 GatechBerk1

Stan1Stan2

Step 1

•Source rooted shortest delay spanning trees of mesh

•Constructed using well known routing algorithms– Members have low degrees

– Small delay from source to receivers

“Mesh”: Richer overlay that may have cycles and

includes all group members• Members have low degrees

• Shortest path delay between any pair of members along mesh is small

Step 2

13

Narada Components• Mesh Management:

– Ensures mesh remains connected in face of membership changes

• Mesh Optimization:– Distributed heuristics for ensuring shortest path delay between

members along the mesh is small

• Spanning tree construction:– Routing algorithms for constructing data-delivery trees

– Distance vector routing, and reverse path forwarding

14

Optimizing Mesh Quality

• Members periodically probe other members at random

• New Link added ifUtility Gain of adding link > Add Threshold

• Members periodically monitor existing links

• Existing Link dropped ifCost of dropping link < Drop Threshold

Berk1

Stan2CMU

Gatech1

Stan1

Gatech2

A poor overlay topology

15

The terms defined • Utility gain of adding a link based on

– The number of members to which routing delay improves

– How significant the improvement in delay to each member is

• Cost of dropping a link based on– The number of members to which routing delay increases, for

either neighbor

• Add/Drop Thresholds are functions of:– Member’s estimation of group size

– Current and maximum degree of member in the mesh

16

Desirable properties of heuristics

• Stability: A dropped link will not be immediately readded

• Partition Avoidance: A partition of the mesh is unlikely to be caused as a result of any single link being dropped

Delay improves to Stan1, CMU

but marginally.

Do not add link!

Delay improves to CMU, Gatech1

and significantly.

Add link!

Berk1

Stan2CMU

Gatech1

Stan1

Gatech2

Probe

Berk1

Stan2CMU

Gatech1

Stan1

Gatech2Probe

17

Used by Berk1 to reach only Gatech2 and vice versa.

Drop!!

An improved mesh !!

Gatech1Berk1

Stan2CMU

Stan1

Gatech2

Gatech1Berk1

Stan2CMU

Stan1

Gatech2

18

Narada Evaluation

• Simulation experiments

• Evaluation of an implementation on the Internet

19

Performance Metrics

• Delay between members using Narada

• Stress, defined as the number of identical copies of a packet that traverse a physical link

Berk2

Gatech Stan1Stress = 2

CMU

Stan2

Berk1

Berk2CMU

Stan1

Stan2Gatech

Berk1

Delay from CMU to Delay from CMU to

Berk1 increasesBerk1 increases

20

Factors affecting performance• Topology Model

– Waxman Variant – Mapnet: Connectivity modeled after several ISP backbones – ASMap: Based on inter-domain Internet connectivity

• Topology Size– Between 64 and 1024 routers

• Group Size– Between 16 and 256

• Fanout range– Number of neighbors each member tries to maintain in the mesh

21

Simulation Details• Simulator

– Packet-level and event-based

– Models propagation delay of physical links

– Does not model queuing delay and packet loss

• Individual Experiment Description– All group members join in random sequence in first 100 seconds

– No change in group membership after 100 seconds

– One sender picked at random and multicasts data at constant rate

22

Delay in typical run4 x unicast delay 1x unicast delay

Waxman : 1024 routers, 3145 linksGroup Size : 128 Fanout Range : <3-6> for all members

23

Naive Unicast

Native Multicast

Narada : 14-fold reduction in

worst-case stress !

Stress in typical run

24

Variation with group size

Waxman model: 1024 routers, 3145 links

Fanout Range: <3-6>

25

Variation with topology model

Waxman

ASMapMapnet

26

Implementation Status

• Implemented and ported to Linux and Sun

• Available as library that can be compiled with applications

• Examining how applications written with IP Multicast API can be used without source-code modification

27

Internet Evaluation • 13 hosts, all join the group at about the same time

• No further change in group membership

• Each member tries to maintain 2-4 neighbors in the mesh

• Host at CMU designated source

Berkeley

UCSB

UIUC1

UIUC2 CMU1

CMU2

UKY

UMass

GATech

UDelVirginia1

Virginia2

UWisc

8

31

1

10

13

15

14

111

381

10

28

Narada Delay Vs. Unicast Delay

Internet Routing

can be sub-optimal

(ms)

(ms)

2x unicast delay 1x unicast delay

29

Related Work

• Yoid (Paul Francis, ACIRI)– More emphasis on architectural aspects, less on performance

– Uses a shared tree among participating members

• More susceptible to a central point of failure

• Distributed heuristics for managing and optimizing a tree are more complicated as cycles must be avoided

• Scattercast (Chawathe et al, UC Berkeley)– Emphasis on infrastructural support and proxy-based multicast

• To us, an end system includes the notion of proxies

– Also uses a mesh, but differences in protocol details

30

Conclusions

• Proposed in 1989, IP Multicast is not yet widely deployed– Per-group state, control state complexity and scaling concerns

– Difficult to support higher layer functionality

– Difficult to deploy, and get ISP’s to turn on IP Multicast

• Is IP the right layer for supporting multicast functionality?

• For small-sized groups, an end-system overlay approach – is feasible

– has a low performance penalty compared to IP Multicast

– has the potential to simplify support for higher layer functionality

– allows for application-specific customizations